Jul 18 Southern California Firms Get $587.0M In Venture Capital In Q2

The latest numbers from the MoneyTree survey came out this evening, tallying up $587.0M in venture capital investments in Q2 2013 across Southern California, spread across 80 deals. Those numbers reflected a drop from Q2 of last year, when there was $868.98M in investments across 97 deals. However, venture dollars invested were above Q1, when Southern California saw $569.1M in investments across 90 deals. The report comes every quarter from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters.

Across the region, Los Angeles led in terms of dollars and deals, with $277.4M invested across 45 companies. Orange County was second, with $161.9M invested across 17 deals; San Diegowas third, with $147.75M in 18 deals. The biggest deal for the quarter was for Venice-based photo messaging app developer Snapchat, which raised a huge, $60M funding round in the quarter. Other large deals included aTyr Pharma, in San Diego, which raised $38.75M, and Aliso Viejo-based Vertos Medical, which raised $22.75M.

By far, the largest investment category for the quarter was software--helped by Snapchat--with $177.872M in investments for Q2, according to the report. The second largest sector was biotechnology, which had nearly $148.6M invested.

On the venture capital side, the most active investors from Southern California were Siemer Ventures (10 deals), Tech Coast Angels (9 deals), Correlation Ventures (8 deals) and Avalon Ventures (5 deals). That was a slight overlap to the most investments in Southern California, which were made by Siemer Ventures (9 deals), Tech Coast Angels (6 deals), and Greycroft Partners (4 deals).

Nationally, the MoneyTree survey found that there was $6.7 billion invested in 913 deals in the second quarter, with dollar investments up 12 percent quarter to quarter, and the number of deals up 2 percent from last quarter. Southern California dropped to fourth in terms of investments in the region versus other high tech centers, behind Silicon Valley ($2.6 billion invested), New England ($823.0M invested), and New York ($703.6M).